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  #1  
Old May 4, 2014, 05:42 PM
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Default Japan's children output

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There were an estimated 16.33 million children aged under 15 as of April 1, down 160,000 from a year earlier, according to Japan's internal affairs and communications ministry.

It was the 33rd straight annual decline and the lowest level since records began in 1950, the ministry said.

The ministry said children accounted for just 12.8 per cent of the population.

In contrast, the ratio of people aged 65 or older was at a record high of 25.6 per cent.

Of major countries with a population of at least 40 million, Japan had the lowest ratio of children to the total population - compared with 19.5 percent for the United States and 16.4 per cent for China.

The proportion of people aged 65 or over is forecast to reach nearly 40 per cent of Japan's population in 2060, the government said.
source: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-05-0...ew-low/5429520

Additional reading: http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...ped-having-sex
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Last edited by Vert1; May 4, 2014 at 05:44 PM.
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Old May 5, 2014, 05:54 AM
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This is horrifying and disturbing news. With such a low birth rate and dwindling supply of young people, video game music veterans (Nobuo Uematsu etc) will be unable to pass on their skills and experience to the next generation, assuming one will exist in the first place.

How will the increasing gap between Japan's elderly and youth population affect Japanese video game music output?

Or is this the beginning of the end of Japanese video game music as we know it?
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  #3  
Old May 5, 2014, 11:50 AM
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Originally Posted by layzee View Post
This is horrifying and disturbing news. With such a low birth rate and dwindling supply of young people, video game music veterans (Nobuo Uematsu etc) will be unable to pass on their skills and experience to the next generation, assuming one will exist in the first place.

How will the increasing gap between Japan's elderly and youth population affect Japanese video game music output?

Or is this the beginning of the end of Japanese video game music as we know it?
This post is absolute ignorance. Low birthrate and "dwindling supply" of young people have nothing to do with video game music composers not being able to pass on their skills to other generations. PS, people are not "supply". The difference between 12% and 20% is millions of people which is statistically insignificant when you're talking about the ~1000 - 5000 active "game" composers. And composers don't have to "pass down" anything, that's why people study music and classical (dead) composers.

I'm not an expert on the subject but I imagine that dwindling birth rates in developed countries has way, way more to do with socio-economic reasons than anything else.

Quote:
How will the increasing gap between Japan's elderly and youth population affect Japanese video game music output?

Or is this the beginning of the end of Japanese video game music as we know it?
Hint: it won't and no, it's not.
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Old May 5, 2014, 12:15 PM
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The problem is that it stagnates the economy, which isn't so good for the Japanese game industry (if choosing to look at it from a narrow perspective). Reality is, people age 65 and up don't pay taxes and certainly aren't buying new videogames.

Japan went through a boom period in the 80's and early 90's, then went into a deep recession. They have largely been flat since then. It's not unlike what the US is going through now, where the Federal Reserve is keeping us from sinking further, yet the signs of economic growth are tepid at best. I have seen a number of indicators that show the US is mirroring Japan.
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Old May 6, 2014, 03:00 PM
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Our current resources can't actually sustain the current gross birthrate, so a declining birthrate is really something to celebrate. It's not as if Japanese people--or anyone else, for that matter--is on the verge of extinction.

The Guardian article isn't actually about birthrate, but about intimacy, and the two topics really ought not to be conflated (people in relationships can be intimate and have lots of sex without needing to have babies, and should be encouraged to do so).

However, there is something here that's very relevant for us as VGM fans:
Quote:
Around 70% of Japanese women leave their jobs after their first child. The World Economic Forum consistently ranks Japan as one of the world's worst nations for gender equality at work. Social attitudes don't help. Married working women are sometimes demonised as oniyome, or "devil wives".
This is a helpful and elucidating statistic that I didn't know. In this way, Japan is still in the 50s (much like the redder half of the United States). It's a serious problem that can't not have serious longterm consequences. I wonder what initiatives Japan has that specifically work to address these issues, such as active recruiting strategies in schools/universities and important, essential services like the U.S.' Planned Parenthood.

Last edited by Jormungand; May 6, 2014 at 03:06 PM.
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Old May 6, 2014, 05:06 PM
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Originally Posted by Jormungand View Post
However, there is something here that's very relevant for us as VGM fans:
This is a helpful and elucidating statistic that I didn't know. In this way, Japan is still in the 50s (much like the redder half of the United States). It's a serious problem that can't not have serious longterm consequences. I wonder what initiatives Japan has that specifically work to address these issues, such as active recruiting strategies in schools/universities and important, essential services like the U.S.' Planned Parenthood.
very interesting, considering the large amount of female Japanese composers.
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Old May 6, 2014, 09:54 PM
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Didn't Yoko Shimomura go freelance (i.e. quit her regular job and probably start working mostly at home) when she got pregnant and Miki Higashino retired because she wanted to as well? There are probably more, known and unknown.
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Old May 7, 2014, 01:57 AM
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A lot of long time female composers indeed work as freelance from home, implying they do it as a "side job" while family comes first. Some male ones as well.
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Old May 8, 2014, 12:15 PM
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Just to clarify, my previous post was posted with faux-seriousness along with an intentionally lame attempt to link the subject of human depopulation to the state of Japanese video game music. This was done because the writer of that post (i.e. me) was amused to see the subject brought up in the first place, on a humble video game music forum no less, as opposed to say, other forums/sites more suited to discuss such a thing (note how the vast majority of the Miscellaneous Discussion forum intended "for the discussion of various other topics" still mainly center around music and CDs).
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